What makes the best Service Desk?

January 13, 2014

What makes the best Service Desk?

After 20 years in the business of IT service management, facilities management and customer support helpdesk tools, we have seen a huge variety of service desk environments, from the large to the small, from the chaotic to the calm! Here at House-on-the-Hill we are proud to have performed thousand of successful implementations and assisted so many organisations with the positive reinforcement of their helpdesk and servicedesk processes. There are many factors which contribute to an effective service desk environment, but we have compiled a simple list of 3 main points that we feel contribute to making the best service desk environments.

1: Everyone has a role to play, and knows what it is!

Sometimes, when there are a vast array of IT and customer support calls being logged on a daily basis, and particularly in newly formed companies, the lines between who is supposed to do what get blurred. This can lead to a pass the parcel of Incidents and Requests, where records are reassigned and juggled between agents like a hot potato. As well as having a damaging effect on your KPI statistics with SLA deadlines being missed, or met by the skin of their teeth, this can have a negative impact on the collective morale of your company: the morale of both customer and staff. It can presume a lack of understanding from a managerial perspective of the needs of customers and agents, and of the types of issue and request that need resolving. It is therefore imperative to react positively to these occurrences, whether that be providing the relevant training or expanding your team, to ensure there will be always be someone with the necessary expertise to handle any type of call and avoid hot-potato situations.

2: A level of transparency is offered to customers

Having a helpdesk tool that allows the option for customers and end users to log and/or track their own calls via a personal web self-service portal has multiple benefits to organisations. Firstly, there is the obvious advantage of customers feeling more involved in the support and service management process, instead of experiencing a void between their needs and how those needs are being responded to. They can peek inside the call management process, and be in direct contact with the real people that are working to resolve their issues. Another advantage of the self-service portal is the ability to offer frequently asked questions to customers, which can quell the amount of calls being logged through customer self-diagnosis. A service catalogue with operational statuses can too display to customers upon logging in that a service may be impacted or offline, but the helpdesk is aware and is working to resolve the issue.

3: There is room for change

The best helpdesk environments are run by managers that are constantly looking forward. Often, a HotH SupportDesk implementation will end with a discussion of where the company sees their service desk going next, and time is spent training service desk managers on how to make changes and additions to the software. In fast-paced working environments, the helpdesk needs to be able to accommodate company changes and evolving customer requirements, without having to reinvent the system or implement support processes from scratch.